On 20 June 2006 we incorporated RISC OS Open Ltd pinch 1 somewhat huffy ambition: to return a proprietary operating strategy and unfastened it up to anyone who fancied helping. Twenty years on, that has mostly happened, and the RISC OS of coming is successful acold amended wellness than the 1 we inherited.
To people the occasion, present is the communicative truthful far, pinch 1 item for each of our first 20 years. Our acknowledgment spell to everyone who has written code, revenge a bug, funded a bounty, contributed successful our forums and wiki, tested a nightly build, aliases simply shouted from the sidelines. None of it would beryllium without you.
Twenty years, a twelvemonth astatine a time
Year 1 (2006-07): it started pinch a scheme to do the unthinkable. Castle and ROOL announced a shared root initiative that autumn, and by the Wakefield Show the pursuing May the very first RISC OS sources were successful nationalist hands.
Year 2 (2007-08): batch by batch, much of the OS went retired to the community, and the early momentum earned ROOL its second Drobe award, this 1 for “Best show of initiative”.
Year 3 (2008-09): a first for the platform. A build of RISC OS 5 ran connected an IYONIX carrying a awesome woody of community-contributed code, shown disconnected to a lukewarm reception astatine the Midlands Show.
Year 4 (2009-10): the plumbing grew up. Nightly autobuilds began rebuilding and testing the sources automatically, while Jeffrey Lee’s larboard to the BeagleBoard, our first measurement towards inexpensive RISC OS hardware, took an Icon Bar award.
Year 5 (2010-11): a neat thought took shape. The Bounty Scheme fto the organization excavation donations and ballot pinch their wallets for the features they astir wanted to spot from the roadmap. It is still going beardown today.
Year 6 (2011-12): moving pinch Piccolo Systems, ROOL published an unfastened root SD and MMC filing system, giving the BeagleBoard machines autochthonal memory-card support and laying important groundwork for the unchangeable merchandise ahead.
Year 7 (2012-13): the watershed. RISC OS Pi brought the OS to the Raspberry Pi, a credit-card machine pinch BBC BASIC only a keystroke away, and put RISC OS successful beforehand of a full caller generation. Our website postulation records did not past the week.
Year 8 (2013-14): RISC OS 5.20 landed arsenic the first unchangeable ROM merchandise successful years, pinch the classical Risc PC and A7000 family included for the first time. To people 50 years of BASIC we besides released Pico, a cut-down RISC OS that boots consecutive to a prompt, conscionable for illustration the Beeb.
Year 9 (2014-15): support for the quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 arrived successful February, followed swiftly by RISC OS 5.22, the adjacent unchangeable merchandise and the first to bundle the OMAP4 (PandaBoard) port.
Year 10 (2015-16): a glimpse of the early turned up astatine the London Show successful the style of Titanium, a dual-core Cortex-A15 committee built pinch RISC OS successful mind. Then, successful June 2016, ROOL reached double figures: 10 years old, pinch astir of the original goals met.
Year 11 (2016-17): monitors learned to present themselves. A bounty delivered EDID support, truthful RISC OS could publication a display’s capabilities straight and spare users the aged ritual of hand-tuned show meaning files.
Year 12 (2017-18): the definitive BBC BASIC Reference Manual came backmost into print, afloat revised crossed 520 pages, and RISC OS 5.24 went stable, this clip pinch the Raspberry Pi and Titanium ports earning their badge, accompanied by a first version RISC OS 5 User Guide put together pinch organization contributions.
Year 13 (2018-19): the extremity we group retired to scope backmost successful 2006. With Castle acquired by RISC OS Developments, RISC OS was re-licensed nether Apache 2.0, free for anyone to use, stock and build upon, commercially aliases otherwise, for the first clip successful its history.
Year 14 (2019-20): activity began connected a larboard to the caller Raspberry Pi 4, and ROOL threw unfastened the doors to its lab, moving the full codification guidelines (every constituent and each 106,000-odd commits of history) onto a nationalist GitLab for anyone to browse and improve.
Year 15 (2020-21): RISC OS 5.28 shipped pinch charismatic Raspberry Pi 4 support and immoderate 700 improvements, and conscionable successful clip for Christmas the all-in-one Pi 400 sewage its ain ready-to-run edition. The Acorn Electron would person approved.
Year 16 (2021-22): the organization had its opportunity astatine the RISC OS Awards, wherever 5.28 took Best New Development and the ROOL forums won Best Website, some by a comfortable margin.
Year 17 (2022-23): the Archimedes BASIC Compiler learned to usage the hardware floating constituent unit, drafting a Mandelbrot immoderate 35 times quicker than the plain interpreter. The adjacent April, RISC OS was chosen by SpaceX for a ngo to Mars, a declare that held up nicely until the 2nd.
Year 18 (2023-24): a engaged twelvemonth for modern conveniences. A autochthonal Git client, Open root SparkFS and NVMe solid-state storage some arrived successful February, and RISC OS 5.30 followed successful April, a bumper unchangeable merchandise spanning 7 hardware platforms.
Year 19 (2024-25): the move to Git paid disconnected handsomely, passing one 1000 accepted merge requests since 2019. ROOL past announced its boldest scheme yet, the Moonshots initiative, a displacement to full-time, multi-year engineering to transportation RISC OS onto 64-bit Arm earlier the 32-bit chips tally dry.
Year 20 (2025-26): the Moonshots rocket began fuelling up pinch its first sponsors and volunteers, the afloat RAM of an 8GB Pi was freed from its 32-bit shackles, and, of each things, Fortran returned to the toolset aft a long-lost transcript surfaced connected a decades-old backup tape.
Here’s to the adjacent twenty
None of this was the activity of ROOL alone. RISC OS coming is hugely improved from the sorry authorities it was successful backmost successful 2006, and the segment astir it is acold livelier for everyone who turned up and sewage stuck in. We’re excited to spot what the early will bring, from the adjacent RISC OS unchangeable releases to our adjacent steps towards the moon.
Thank you, each of you. Here’s to the adjacent 20 years!
- Steve Revill and everyone astatine RISC OS Open
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